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The First 
Division 




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The First 
Division 




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Henry Russei^i. \fn^L<B;K -»-— 



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The Crescent Pbess 

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FOREWORD 





T IS easy to forget. And we, it 
seems, are fast forgetting that hut 
lately men in thousands were dying, 
in hundreds of thousands risking 
&^ death, mutilation, enduring the 
agony of battle, creating a new tradition of Amer- 
ican manhood, at our command. Our fine 
fervor has vanished as the summer mist, souls 
have gone cold. The lonely limping figure in 
khaki, still sometimes met on the street, we pass 
"with careless glance; gold stripes on both sleeves, 
bit of ribbon on breast, meaningless symbols to 
us to whom the war meant petty sacrifice, a trifle 
of discomfort, or even profit. One does not talk 
of the war nowadays. We are tired of the war 
and of hearing about it — the most dramatic, stu- 
pendous fact in our history! The clustered 
graves overseas, the path of glory that led to them? 
A tale that is told! 

I, who in unheroic role saw much of what 
this booklet shall tell, cannot forget. May I set 
down one reason, one of many reasons that grow 
more poignant as they recede? 

During the third day before Soissons there 
was a tiny knoll that, they told me, was taken 
and retaken six times, at the end remaining in 



it: "^ * 



I^OREWORD 

our lines. Toivard nightfall there was a lull in 
the storm; one could go forward with comparative 
safety. Just at dusk I came to the slope leading 
up that knoll. And everywhere I looked the 
trampled wheat was dotted by recumbent figures. 
There was one field, two or three acres, on which 
it seemed you could not have stood ten feet from 
some one of those figures. They might have 
been wearied troops that had thrown themselves 
down to sleep. They slept indeed, the sleep no 
earthly reveille could disturb. I wish you could 
have seen that silent company under the summer 
twilight. It was not gruesome then, and it was 
not all tragedy. There lay the best of America, 
not dead nor sleeping, but alive so long as we will 
it to live. For America, if it is anything lasting^ 
means what they showed — free, unswerving loy- 
alty to an ideal. Who shall say that they who 
died there lacked vision of that ideal, even though 
on their unschooled tongues it could never have 
become articulate? They paid to the uttermost 
for their faith. 

And an even greater thing was found a little 
beyond — the thin line of the survivors; too 
weary for words, four days and nights sleepless^ 
without food save the crusts they had gleaned 
from the packs of enemy dead, souls lacerated 
by their ordeal. They had just been told that 



♦ VI ♦ 



FOREWORD 



the expected relief was not at hand, that in the 
morning they were to leapfrog the first wave and 
go over again; most of them, they knew it, to 
join their comrades in sleep. And not a quiver, 
not a doubt, not a fear, not a regret. They were 
ready. 

While that spirit endures, America shall 
live. When America can forget, that spirit will 
die. 

And so, for remembrance, I am going to 
tell a story. It is not a military account, it is 
incomplete, but it is history, the tale of men 
whose record is one of the epic chapters of the 
warfaring of all time. It is the story of a 
division^ in particular of two infantry brigades, 
nearly all the original members of which now 
lie under wooden crosses somewhere in France, 
or bear in their bodies the marks of the price 
of victory. 

And the division is The Old First. First 
in France, first in the lines, first in battle and 
victory; and worthy its place in the van of the 
army that changed the fate of the world. 

H. R. M. 



^ VII « 



11 



CANTIGNY 
May 28y 1918 

ic -k ic 

SOISSONS 
July 18-22, 1918 

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ST. MIHIEL 
September 12-13, 1918 

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ARGONNE-MEUSE 
October 1-12, 1918 

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ARGONNE-MEUSE 

November 1-7, 1918 

• • • 

'' Honneur aux worts pour la patrie" 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



II 




E FIRST DIVISION was com- 
posed of the First Field Artil- 
lery Brigade, First Engineers, 
First Infantry Brigade (the 
Sixteenth and Eighteenth Regiments), and 
Second Infantry Brigade (the Twenty-sixth 
and Twenty-eighth Regiments), First, Sec- 
ond and Third Machine-gun and Second 
Field Signal Battalions, all famous old 
regular organizations. That is to say, 
it was made up largely of survivors of pre- 
war days when to be in the army was not 
popular and scarcely respectable, when sol- 
dier material was not "picked" but taken 
as it could be had, from the wayward, the 
inefficient, the purposeless, ragtag and bob- 
tail who drifted into the service because it 
was easy or offered a refuge; with, of 
course, a sprinkling of bolder spirits to 
whom the rough-and-tumble life of the army 
appealed, and war volunteers to bring it up 
to the war strength. It did not look 



*3 * 



THE FIRST DIVISION 

heroic. Physically it was less impressive 
than any other army outfit I have ever 
seen. In intelligence it was probably a 
little below the American average, in edu- 
cation certainly. It spoke a dozen tongues 
and, I have no doubt, maltreated them all 
as sadly as it did our own. Its manners 
were atrocious, its mode of speech appalling, 
its appetites enormous, its notions of why 
we were at war rudimentary, to say the 
least. They were their country's hired sol- 
diers; their country had an enemy; therefore 
they would go out and fight him. Un- 
troubled faith; perfect obedience. 

But that is a first impression which 
later understanding has almost erased 
from memory. There were, even in 
the ranks, men who stood out — fine fel- 
lows, loyal friends, good minds, earnest 
patriots; and the Division was officered — 
in the junior grades from the early civilian 
training camps — ^by men who brought to 
their task intelligence, unflagging industry 
and a courage that was to be given the last 



* 4 * 



THE FIRST DIVISION 

proof. And the day came when they all, 
officers and men, took a high place among 
the stalwarts of the earth. 

They reached France in June, 1917. 
From then until the January following they 
were drilled incessantly. They were trained 
in French tactics and British bayonet exer- 
cise, retrained in the same methods adapted 
to the American system, and then had to 
do it all over again on the strictly American 
plan. They were hiked up hill and down 
dale, under full pack. They were maneu- 
vered for days and weeks on end, in heat 
and cold, in rain and dust, in snow and 
mud and slush. Scores of men have told 
me of days of wallowing through the mud, 
at the end of which, tired, hungry, wet to 
the skin, they would throw themselves down 
under scanty cover in freezing billets — and 
in the morning would light candles to thaw 
out the wet shoes that had frozen to their 
feet. It w^as not the least of their ordeals, 
and not the least of their service. For ihey 
were working out tactical and training prob- 



m 



♦ 5 ,► 



THE FIRST DIVISION 

lems of which the great army to come after 
them should find the solution ready to hand. 

From October fifteen to November 
fifteen the routine of training was varied by 
tours in the trenches, under French com- 
mand, in the Somervillers sector, near 
Nancy. Here, in a German night raid, the 
first Americans fell in the Great War — En- 
right, Gresham and Hay. 

On January fifteen the division as a 
whole occupied the Ansauvillers sector, be- 
fore Toul and confronting Montsec of the 
St. Mihiel salient. On January thirty the 
sector passed under American command. It 
was the first American sector. 

America was formally in the battle line. 

It was a quiet sector, in which warfare 
consisted chiefly in lying cold and utterly 
miserable in water-filled trenches and gun- 
pits, with only an occasional night raid or 
patrol or enemy gas bombardment to vary 
the monotony. But America may thank 
high heaven that her great army of a year 



*6 ♦ 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



later did not have to spend a winter in the 
trenches. 

They were still holding that sector 
when, on March twenty-one, came rumor 
that the long advertised Boche offensive had 
broken loose. All too soon came confirma- 
tion, with word that Goughs Fifth Army 
had cracked. The next few days were a 
succession of heartbreaking reports, of shat- 
tered lines, recoiling armies, of disaster 
heaped upon disaster. Then came word 
that unity of command had been achieved 
at last, and then that Pershing had gone 
before Foch and in fine, dramatic phrase 
placed the American army at his disposal. 
The First Division drew in its belt and 
began to oil its rifles. 

Easter morning came orders to prepare 
to move. That night the Twenty-sixth or 
"Yankee" Division marched into the sector. 
By the night of April three, the relief was 
complete, and the First Division was on its 
w^ay to the "big show^." 



^ 



* 7 -^ 



[p 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



Two weeks later it was marching 
through the fair fields of Picardy, whose 
populace, always in readiness for instant 
flight, surveyed wistfully but coldly and 
doubtfully these unimpressive stranger sol- 
diers. For the Hun was at Montdidier 
and looking hungrily over their heads at 
Paris. The First was moving toward Mont- 
didier, by forced marches. There w^as one 
hike no one who took part in it can ever 
forget. From late morning to late after- 
noon they marched, twenty-five kilometers, 
halted for supper, were assigned billets. 
And then, just as everyone w^as turning in 
for a good night's sleep. First Call blew, 
and a few minutes later Fall In. From 
midnight — a night so black you literally 
could not see the man before you — until 
dawn they marched, and from dawn until 
four in the afternoon — forty kilometers 
more. There can be nothing more delight- 
ful than a leisurely walking tour through 
Picardy in springtime. But sixty-five kilo- 
meters without sleep — under full field equip- 



♦ 8 ♦ 



THE FIRST DIVISION 

ment — seventy-five pounds of it — fifty 
minutes' hike, ten minutes* rest, and that 
ten sometimes reduced to three — it can be- 
come torture. But it can be done. Those 
boys — ragtag and bobtail of a land that 
breeds a stronger manhood — they did it. 
They grunted, they groaned, they cursed, 
and then with grim faces and set teeth and 
staggering step in silence they did it. 

A few days later they took over a 
sector several kilometers west of Montdidier, 
near the tip of the salient the German 
mailed fist had thrust toward Paris. 

It was not "springtime in Picardy" up 
there. Trenches were mere broken scratches 
in the earth, scarce waist-deep; dugouts no 
deeper, and roofed only by a thin sheeting 
of iron and a layer of sod. No protection 
here against a direct hit — and direct hits 
were plenty in a constant strafing that some- 
times reached the density of a barrage. 
Broyes, Villers-Tournelle, Coullemelle, were 
hells in which the fury of the Boche took no 
rest. They had been villages, they were 



II 



* 9 * 



^ 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



now mere shapeless heaps of ruins daily 
churned anew by exploding shells; always 
the air tainted by the garlicky odor of mus- 
tard gas. You lived underground, you bur- 
rowed deeper where you could. Even un- 
derground you lived in a constant poignant 
expectancy — of what you never quite put 
into words. Often it came — a sudden, ris- 
ing shriek through the air, a crash 
calls for stretcher men, or a burial party 
after dark. Every day, every night, there 
were additions to the casualty list, some- 
times scores, sometimes hundreds. In Coul- 
lemelle one night fell twenty thousand gas 
shells. Another night Villers-Tournelle — 
equal to about three city blocks — received 
ninety thousand shells in tw^o hours. They 
took out eight hundred casualties that night. 
There were biisy times at the hospital. They 
established an American national cemetery 
in that sector. 

So passed six weeks. 

One day, at an observation post, they 
pointed out to me a long gray patch across 



*io * 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



a valley and about a kilometer w^ithin the 
German lines. "That, " they said, "is Can- 
tigny." I remember the date — May twenty- 
five. The most critical hour of history was 
at hand. 

I can think and write only in love 
of the people of France, whom the 
world must forever hold in veneration 
for their service in this conflict. But 
it is true that during the winter of 1917-18 
the defeatist propaganda had been viciously 
at work, undermining the French morale. 
Why continue a struggle that could have no 
decisive end? For nearly four years France 
had been holding on, holding on, always 
under promise of victory. And what had 
you? Fat graveyards, a mountain of taxa- 
tion — and now Germany, freed and triumph- 
ant on the east, preparing to roll her Jug- 
gernaut over Paris. Who was to halt those 
legions fast streaming over from the eastern 
to the western front? England, that at 
Cambrai had reached and passed the zenith 
of her power? France, that had exhausted 



W 



4? Wip 



53 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



herself maintaining a deadlock against half 
the German war machine? America, then? 
America indeed! Much prating of high 
ideals, much blowing of wind, but as to the 
war, just where was America? A handful 
of half-trained divisions in France, a few 
kilometers of line held, and, for the rest, 
some millions of men in America yet to be 
trained and transported, when the need was 
in France and now! That great man 
Georges Clemenceau kept France face to 
the foe, but the morale of the poilu, the 
spirit that had given the world a Verdun, 
was faltering. 

And that at a time when France most 
had need of his staunchness. In March 
the German crashed through to Montdidier. 
In April he was striding through Armen- 
tieres toward the Channel ports. And now, 
in late May, shifting his huge reserves, with 
impressive lack of concealment he was pre- 
paring to crush the French. Strategically, 
we came to know, the situation was not as 
desperate as it seemed, given unshaken 



* 12* 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



French morale, and given America's ability 
to throw large effectives into the fray at 
once; the first hung upon the second. But — 
it is worth repeating — the French morale 
v/as shaking. And few, friend or enemy, 
then believed that America could become 
an important factor on the battlefield of 
1918. There was needed a demonstration 
of America's striking power, a demonstra- 
tion so cleancut and decisive as to leave no 
doubt of the American's ability to meet and 
beat the veteran German at his own game. 
With what care our troops in France must 
have been scanned for the choice! For 
there must be no failure. 

The choice fell upon the First Division, 
and the taking and retention of Cantigny, 
that gray patch across the valley, was to 
be the historic test. 

May twenty-seven, the German crashed 
over the Chemin des Dames, betw^een Sois- 
sons and Rheims, the blow that was to 
carry him to the Marne. That night the 



*I3* 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



Twenty-eighth Infantry moved into the 
trenches opposite Cantigny. 

At three o'clock our guns began a slow^ 
fire of destruction on the enemy trenches 
and communications. At four-thirty began 
the final artillery preparation — an ear-split- 
ting, earth-shaking inferno, a glorious thing 
to hear from our side. That lasted an 
hour, then the guns rose to the measure of 
a drum played by a master — the rolling 
barrage. At the same instant — five-thirty in 
the morning of May tw^enty-eight — the in- 
fantry leaped from the trenches. 

For the first tim,e A^mericans were go- 
ing over the top to take and hold territory 
from the Germans. 

From the observation post you could 
see most of it. First, the rolling barrage, 
a wall of whitish smoke, punctured by sharp 
flashes and spoutings of the Picardy chalk 
soil. Fifty yards behind, the tanks and 
first wave of infantry; two hundred yards 
farther back the second wave; and five 
hundred yards behind that the third wave. 



* 14^7 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



The enemy put down his counterbarrage. 
There were a few gaps in the line, but the 
three waves — three hedges of steel gleaming 
in the morning sun — went forward at a 
slow, steady w^alk, just as we had seen them 
do it at maneuvers. The first German 
lines were reached — a pause — brisk work 
here, the enemy taking a first lesson in the 
terrible Yankee bayonet. Then on into the 
gray patch across the valley. The bayonets 
gleamed beyond, disappeared in the woods 
above. Cantigny was ours! 

But the battle was just begun. Twice 
the French had taken Cantigny, only to lose 
it. Could the Americans hold? 

Toward noon the measure of the guns 
picked up again. Counterbattery work ihis 
time — the enemy was barraging the new 
American lines. Then word was flashed 
back, "The Germans are counter-attacking." 
A little later came the word, "Counterattack 
broken!" The guns picked up again. Upon 
our men in the new lines fell a well-placed 
hurricane of fire and steel and death. Again 



♦ 15 * 



w 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



the enemy attacked, and again the attack 
failed. Six times the German, desperate to 
avert — not the loss of Cantigny — but the 
moral effect of an American victory at this 
juncture, came over to retake the lost posi- 
tion. Six times the attack was crumpled up. 
The hurricane of death never ceased. Then 
after a pause a seventh and last attack, the 
most determined of all, was launched. Un- 
der cover of a barrage even more dense, 
two close-packed waves of infantry swept 
out of a sheltering woods. To us waiting, 
it did not seem possible that either power 
or spirit for resistance could survive that 
storm. The storm swept over the front 
line. . . . Something did survive, for 
from our trenches broke out a blaze of rifle 
and machine-gun fire. The German was 
brave, he pressed on — the new No Man's 
Land was littered with gray-green wounded 
and dead. Our trenches ran red with the 
blood of those who pmd for the victory. 
For victory it was! A few Germans reached 



* 16 4? 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



our front lines, but they reached them only 
to die. Cantigny remained ours. 

America could attack, America could 
hold. The great test was passed. 

The next morning, beside ne^vs of the 
German offensive, appeared this brief com- 
munique: "The Americans, in a brilliant 
local action, have taken Cantigny, and held 
it despite repeated determined counterat- 
tacks." That communique was read to 
every unit of every French army, and 
by town crier in every village and 
hamlet of France, and in England, 
too. Throughout all France, on the 
verge of a panic, went a thrill of new 
hope. The Americans could fight, after all! 
Most important, the lesson was not lost 
upon the high command. Cantigny auto- 
matically made every American soldier in 
France an immediate fighting asset. The 
Second Division lay just behind us, waiting 
to relieve the First. The First was told to 
hold on awhile longer, the Second was 
ordered to a point near the Marne. Cha- 



[I 



cfr 17 * 



^ 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



teau Thierry, Belleau Wood and Bouresches 
corollaries to Cantigny, were written into 
history. France was strong again. America 
was ready. America was in the war. 

When in early July the First marched 
out of the Cantigny sector, it was through 
villages whose people, happy and smiling, 
came out to meet them. Greetings passed, 
as from friend to friend. "The Americans 
have saved France!" And French mothers 
wept upon American graves. 

For there was a price — there is always 
the price! For its victory and its stay in 
the Cantigny sector, the First Division had 
paid with America's first real casualty list, 
nearly five thousand wounded and dead. 



4FI8 4^ 



THE FIRST DIVISION 




HERE was a few days* rest in 
billets, then things began to 
happen with a rush. There 
was a sudden move by truck 
toward the Marne. 

A dramatic ride that. Another and 
bigger historic hour — one was thrillingly 
conscious of it — impended, a climax pre- 
pared by the master mind directing the 
Allied armies. 

The stage was being set. On every 
road, as far as the eye could reach, an end- 
less stream of camions; w^hole battalions of 
seventy- fives; huge "heavies" drawn by 
tractors or twenties of horses; cavalry trot- 
ting across the fields; troops white and black 
and yellow^ encamped along the roads; an 
infinite clatter of w^heels and hoofs and 
orders shouted in a dozen tongues; frantic, 
sweating M. P.'s fighting to prevent traffic 
jams at crossroads; the sky hazy with the 
dust of it. All the world and its engines 



t I9if 



w 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



seemed going in the one direction. Last 
dramatic touch, it was the Fourteenth of 
July, natal day of Republican France: which 
day the enemy had chosen for his fifth and 
final offensive toward Paris. Above the 
clamor of moving armies rose the thunder 
of his guns, opening up along the Marne, 
from Soissons to Rheims. 

On the fifteenth the enemy's infantry 
struck. He crossed the Marne. He was 
thrown back — an American division, the 
Third, did that. By the evening of the six- 
teenth the word was definite: the German 
drive had been stopped dead in its tracks. 
By that time the First had reached Dam- 
martin Cind left it, and was moving, so the 
milestones said, toward Soissons. Traffic 
streams had swollen into rivers, a very tide 
of power sweeping up toward the German 



Foch's time had come. 

The evening of the seventeenth the 
First halted, facing the heights southwest of 
Soissons. 



*20it 



THE FIRST DIVISION 

The so-called Second Battle of the 
Marne was in reality won on those heights, 
a w^idc, rolling plateau cut by several deep, 
ugly ravines and covering the Soissons- 
Chateau Thierry highway and the Soissons- 
Oulchy le Chateau railroad — the two ar- 
teries which fed the salient. Upon these 
heights the enemy had buttressed his entire 
Marne position, and during his month of 
occupancy he had done everything possible 
to render them impregnable. If Foch's 
counterstroke of July eighteen was to suc- 
ceed, those heights must first be taken and 
those communications cut. To this task the 
French command assigned what were prob- 
ably the four greatest shock divisions in 
the world — the One Hundred Fifty-first In- 
fantry Division (French), the First United 
States, the French Moroccan Division, in- 
cluding the Foreign Legion, and the Second 
United States. They vsrent into line the 
night of the seventeenth in that order, from 
left to right. 



fl 



4r2l 4? 



® 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



It rained that night, a steady down- 
pour, and all through the night the troops 
of the First — already hungry and in need 
of sleep from their hasty moves — plodded 
wearily through the mud. They reached 
their position, on the slope of the plateau, 
at five minutes to five. Almost the same in- 
stant the enemy, apprised of the impending 
attack, put down an inhibition barrage. At 
five o'clock all the massed Allied guns, from 
Soissons to Chateau Thierry suddenly began 
to thunder — the rolling barrage. The great 
counterattack was on. With the crash, 
the infantry rose from the trenches, 
moved up out of the valley and the mists, 
on to the plateau, into the sunshine and the 
enemy's fire. They advanced steadily until 
nine o clock, then halted to reform their 
lines. At two in the afternoon they went 
over again, and when they halted for the 
night they had achieved an advance of 
seven kilometers. 

But at a price! 



*22 * 



THE FIRST DIVISION 

Back in the ruined village of Coeuvres 
was the divisional evacuation station, and 
back to Coeuvres v/ent the wounded, in 
ambulances and trucks, on foot, by hun- 
dreds — too fast for evacuation. They filled 
the station, lay ranked along street corners, 
crowded courtyards. Some died for lack 
of prompt surgical attention. Some lay in 
white, silent agony. Some chattered cease- 
lessly in the delirium of pain. Over all was 
the fetid odor of rotting flesh and stale 
blood. 

Up on the heights it was w^orse. The 
roadsides were littered with dead horses, 
dead men. The trampled wheatfields were 
dotted with rifles thrust bayonet down into 
the earth, guides to future burial parties. 
The .American rifle was always distinguished 
by a white rag. In that part of the field 
there were four Germans to every American 
rifle so posed. 

The Bavarians of that first day, taken 
by surprise, had fought well but hopelessly. 



^ 



4^23 4? 




THE FIRST DIVISION 



During the night they were reinforced by 
two more divisions, crack Prussian Guard 
units. And in the morning, when our in- 
fantry went over again, it was against an 
enemy who resisted to the death. The 
Prussian machine-gunner was a sturdy sol- 
dier. Every machine-gun position had to 
be taken by direct frontal attack. One 
death-spitting nest was succeeded by an- 
other. The proportion of the dead changed. 
Our lines grew thin, but they pressed on 
and the second night found the division 
lying diagonally across the Paris-Soissons 
highway. 

A child, glancing at the field, could 
have pieced together a story of those first 
tw^o days. Here a shell had registered a 
direct hit on an advancing squad, and the 
squad, fragments of men, lay scattered about. 
There a machine-gvin nest had held out 
stubbornly and had to be taken at a price. 
The price lay where it had been paid. There 
was a cemetery that the Germans had con- 



*24* 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



verted into a strongpoint. They had emp- 
tied the vaults of their former occupants 
and used those gruesome abodes as dugouts. 
When I came upon it, it was again occupied 
only by the dead, and a semicircle of other 
dead lay before it. In the Dommiers ravine 
had been a fearful grapple; there too, a 
little later, an aid station had been set up 
and scores of wounded assembled, and an 
enemy plane had come over and gotten a 
direct hit — I have to pass over what I saw 
there. The advance up the road from Dom- 
miers had been swift, bayonet outfighting 
machine-gun terribly. The dead lay in 
little tangled heaps, gray-green and khaki 
side by side. There was a tank that had 
been hit just as it w^as flattening out a 
machine-gun nest and its occupants; and a 
German machine-gunner had craw^led into 
the tank, thrown out the dead crew, set up 
his gun and from his little fortress swept 
our advancing lines with horrible ef- 
fect. The advance upon the highway had 



*2i* 



^ 



THE FIRST DIVISION 

been through a storm of lead. Beyond, as 
the battle continued, it grew worse. . 
The July sun was blazing hot. There were 
no burial parties until the fifth day. When 
the breeze stirred. 

The second night our shattered in- 
fantry lines were reorganized, most of the 
reserves were brought up, and in the morn- 
ing they were up and over again, one 
division attacking five, in a determined 
effort to get the whole division across the 
Paris highw^ay. They were met, on the left, 
by a violent counterattack. The weight of 
this attack fell on the Second Brigade, that 
is, the Twenty-sixth and Twenty-eighth In- 
fantry Regiments. There followed a hand- 
to-hand struggle without equal in the history 
of American arms. All through that day 
the lines surged back and forth, in attack 
and counterattack. They fought with bayo- 
nets, with grenades, with clubbed rifles, with 
knives. Men fell like dead leaves before 
the autumn gale. Officers went dow^n in 



*26 ♦ 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



alarming numbers. One battalion com- 
mander of the Twenty-eighth reported 
that all his officers were down. The 
Twenty-sixth lost its colonel, lieuten- 
ant-colonel, every battalion commander, 
and found itself under command of 
a captain of less than two years* service. 
Some companies melted out of existence. 
There was some confusion, men became lost 
from their units. But after every surge for- 
ward, after every failure, the remaining 
officers reformed the men nearest them and, 
when the command, "Attack!" was re- 
peated, they went at it again. And when 
the third night fell, what was left of the 
division lay firmly across the Paris highway. 

The French on our left had been as- 
signed as their objective Berzy-le-Sec — key 
to the Marne salient, since it commanded 
the all-important highway and railroad, fhe 
French were unable to take it, so on the 
third night they were relieved by fresh 
troops. So were the Moroccans on our right. 



* 27 * 



w 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



Our Second Division also was relieved. The 
First, which had suffered most heavily of 
all, also expected to be taken out. Instead 
came the astounding order: "In the morn- 
ing you will attack. Extend your line to 
the left, and take Berzy-le-Sec!" The brunt 
of that task, too, would fall on the Second 
Brigade. There was muttered protest from 
the command at the front. "Attack! We 
are too few. The men haven't eaten, they 
haven't slept, for four days. They have 
been through hell. It can't be done!" But 
an order is an order. And so another 
reorganization was effected. The few re- 
maining reserves were brought up into the 
front lines. 

And that night the Hun threw 
in still another fresh division of Prussian 
Guards, concentrated against our Second 
Brigade and squarely in the path to Berzy- 
le-Sec. If ever troops faced the impossible, 
it was that Second Brigade the night of 
July twenty. 



t2& 1^ 



^ THE FIRST DIVISION 

But at daybreak the waiting Prussian 
saw the khaki wave rise out of the earth 
once more and come grimly toward him. 
He stood to his guns and took his toll until 
he died. And for a little it seemed that 
he was going to halt the advance. Then 
the brigade commander, walking along his 
lines under direct fire, coolly reformed his 
shattered battalions, took his place in the 
first wave and in person led them in another 
attack. This time the Prussian killed and 
died in vain. The khaki wave rolled over 
him and his comrades. Somewhere, some- 
how, those exhausted boys — flotsam and 
jetsam of a land that had given them little 
but this chance to die — found new strata of 
endurance, new w^ells of courage, to beat 
down the veteran crack troops of Europe. 
And when they halted, the smoking ruins 
of Berzy-le-Sec were theirs, the Marne 
salient was doomed, and the great allied 
advance begun which, before winter's snows 



fl 



♦ 29* 



[p 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



should fly, was to bring the black eagle flut- 
tering to earth. 

The fifth night they were relieved by 
the Fifteenth Scottish Division. 

We went back a little ahead of 
them and in the village of Pontarme 
we made a bit of a party for them — 
something to eat, something hot to drink. 
We made rather prodigious preparations. 
One battalion filed in, was fed and passed 
out; they scarcely made any impression 
upon our supplies. Then came the battalion 
I call my own. They were fed, the line 
broke, and they gathered around us, a group 
of boys still dazed by the incredible things 
they had seen and done. And they barely 
filled the little courtyard in which we had 
our plant. That battalion had gone in one 
thousand strong, with thirty-two officers. 
About us were less than two hundred, with 
four officers, two of them wounded. I 
said to the wounded boy captain in com- 



* 30* 



THE FIRST DIVISION 

mand, "And the others?" He said, "There 
are no others." 

It was true of both those infantry bri- 
gades. They had gone in, a few more than 
ten thousand fighting men. Eight thousand 
fell. 

The price of victory. 



II 



4f3t« 



THE FIRST DIVISION 




s?ND now another picture, one of 
•war's rare spectacles. The 
scene, once again the first 
American sector. A thrilling 
panorama. A level valley-plain, perhaps 
three miles wide, dotted by ruined 
villages and thick groves with their 
menace of a hidden enemy, and cut 
by yellow serrated lines, the trenches of 
the infantry. On one side the gently slop- 
ing ridge behind which lurk the Yankee 
guns. On the other, that series of hills 
and ridges known as Montsec, in their van 
and towering insolent over all the landscape, 
the famous Butte de Montsec. A very 
Gibraltar, this Montsec, one of the strongest 
positions in France. Once, so they say, 
the French lost thirty thousand in ten min- 
utes in one futile attack. . . . The 
date, September eleven. On the morrow 
the First American Army, now four hundred 



♦ 32« 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



thousand strong, was to try to crush in the 
St. Mihiel salient, four years impregnable. 
To the First Division had been assigned the 
task, supposed to be most difficult, of out- 
flanking and taking Montsec, and smashing 
through to the center of the salient. We 
expected a bloody affair, another Soissons 



or worse. 



It was not, alas, the same division ! The 
artillery had come practically intact out of 
the Soissons fighting, a few of the wounded 
doughboys had strayed back. But during 
August the infantry had been recruited to 
full strength with new men, fine, strapping 
fellows from the draft and the later officers* 
schools. Their training had been brief, they 
had never been under fire. But they had 
heard of the greatness of Soissons, and they 
were strong in the resolve that the standard 
there set should not be lowered. The per- 
sonnel of a fighting division changes; its 
tradition, its soul, lives on. 



fl 



*33* 



^ 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



Nine o'clock, and black as Egypt; rain 
falling in torrents. Through mud kneedeep 
— not the kneedeep of poetic license but 
of cold, disagreeable fact — the infantry 
plowed forward into position, the first wave 
in the trenches on the valley floor, the sec- 
ond and third waves just behind the crest of 
the Yankee ridge. 

One o'clock; a deep-throated "bootTi," 
a signal. Suddenly the night was alight 
and quivering with sound. All the great 
cannon that for months had lain hidden and 
silent for this very hour, were belching fire 
and steel upon Montsec. The wet sky 
grew red with the blaze of it. Fountains of 
white flame outlined the enemy ridges. The 
towering Butte was a cataract of fire. 

But, strange, no answer from the Ger- 
man guns. 

The rain ceased. Dawn came, gray 
and cold, a keen wind blowing. A whistle 
cut faintly through the din of guns. The 
scattered groups on the ridge stiffened mto 



* 34 * 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



line, the open formation the Americans 
know and use so well. Over the plain 
rolled the barrage, the tanks, the first wave, 
pj'gmylike under the shadow of the hills. 
Still no answer from Montsec. The second 
wave topped the crest, and the ominous 
silence of the German guns was unbroken. 
Then the w^hole malicious plan dawned 
upon the marchers. The German would 
wait until the third wave was over and well 
down the hill, then put down a box bar- 
rage and cut the American line to pieces. 
And he could do it! There were at least 
three kilometers to go, every foot in full 
view^ from those frowning heights. Not a 
man could reach them alive. The third and 
last wave appeared, coming over the crest. 
And nothing happened. 

A few scattering shells burst over the 
first wave. That was all until the woods 
at the right of the Butte was entered. The 
Germans were there, and a few machine- 
gunners — as ever the enemy's best soldiers 



*35 * 



^ 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



— tried to put up a fight. The second wave 
passed over their dead bodies. The rest 
had but one thought: to surrender before it 
was too late. The astounding truth became 
clear. The enemy, overcome by the strength 
of our preparations, was running aw^ay! 
This formidable fastness, the taking of 
which could have been made so costly, was 
being given up with only such fighting as 
rearguards could make. 

The marchers' spirits bounded skyhigh. 
Expecting a shambles, they had found only 
a maneuver. Wind and exercise dried out 
wet clothes. One grew warm; one w^as a 
boy on a holiday; one liked this war. Even 
the few wounded who trickled back from 
the first wave took their hard luck as a joke. 

So it went. All that day they marched 
and maneuvered, moving with beautiful pre- 
cision from objective to objective. Every- 
where they found the same thing: for the 
most part a frightened, docile enemy, here 
and there a fanatic machine-gunner. When 



*36 * 



THE FIRST DrVISION 

such an obstreperous one was met, the 
doughboys would flatten out, creep around 
to flanking positions, then pick him off with 
the rifle or dash in upon him from the sides. 
Or a tank would lumber casually toward him, 
spitting fire. Usually he saw the light; if 
not, so much the worse for him I There 
was one who, having called "Kamarad," 
suddenly tried to turn his gun upon his 
captors. It was very bad for him. 
The roar of our guns died down; there was 
no need to waste ammunition on an enemy 
who would not stand. 

That evening came the news: the left 
of the First had touched hands with the 
right of the Twenty-sixth Division, which 
had smashed through from Les Eparges. 
The St. Mihiel salient had passed into his- 
tory. It had cost the First only seven hun- 
dred casualties — and what are seven hun- 
dred among so many! Except, of course, 
that they gave all they had to give. 



fl 



*37* 



^ 



THE FIRST DIVISION 




T. MIHIEI. was, for the First, a 
parade, a maneuver. But it 
had enormous value. It was 

Ql great training. The new troops 

came out of that affair in superb morale. It 
was to be needed. 

Two weeks later the division faced a 
new front. 

The initial pa5rment on the Marne was 
bearing fruit. Since the morning of July 
eighteen, the Allied pressure had not 
ceased. From the North Sea to the Ar- 
gonne the enemy was recoiling, recoiling 
under the blows of British, French and 
American armies in turn. The Hindenburg 
Line had been broken. And now^, from the 
west bank of the Argonne massif to the 
River Meuse, a great American army — 
nearly all the fighting divisions — had been 
assembled for the attack. A terrible ter- 
rain, the most difficult naturally on all the 



*38 * 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



western front: a tangle of hills, narrow de- 
files and thick forests; fortified through four 
years by every means the German craft 
could devise, square miles of intricate wire 
entanglements, thousands of hidden ma- 
chine-gun nests, massed guns of all calibers. 
A maze of death-traps. 

During those two weeks the First had 
earned the name "Gypsy Division." By 
day they lived in the woods, bivouacked on 
the ground, out of sight of enemy planes. 
Every night they moved — twice by trucks, 
other times by long, w^earisome hikes along 
slippery, hilly roads — to some other woods. 
Much of the time it rained, all of the time 
it was muddy. They were dirty, vermin- 
infested, with no chance for bath or change 
of clothing; there were colds, and much 
dysentery. . Much of the anecdotal 

stuff written of the American soldier is un- 
true in the sense that it is not characteristic. 
But one is bound to note the spirit of those 
boys in those last days. There was no 



[p 



*39* 



^ 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



grumbling, no petty bickering, no fault- 
finding. Nor was there demonstrativeness, 
nor sentimentality; they were a bit quieter 
than usual. But there was an air of 
friendliness, of thoughtfulness one for an- 
other one finds only too seldom in this life. 
How often one had to mark the growth, 
under stress of common trial, of that spirit, 
manifested in shy, sometimes awkward, al- 
ways beautiful generosities, and never so 
strong as at the last when they faced the 
supreme trial I 

You see, they were a veteran organi- 
zation, they could read the signs, and they 
knew they lived under the shadow of death. 
For the First was not in the initial attack of 
September twenty-eight. It lay back as 
army reserve. That meant that if anything 
went wrong, if some spent division found 
itself unable to take a too difficult sector, 
the First would be thrown into the breach. 
Hard times lay ahead. 



f^ 40 r&7 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



They listened to the thunder of the 
four thousand guns that paved the way 
for the attack. They heard of the first 
day's brilliant advance, and then of the 
gruelling work that began as the German 
set himself for his most desperate defense 
of the most vital point in his line. 

Something did go wrong. One of the 
attacking divisions found itself unable to 
take the heights of Exermont, a key position 
in the center of the German line. On the 
night of September thirty-October one. the 
First took over the sector. There was no 
fluttering of flags, no playing of bands to 
announce that a fresh division was going in; 
only a silent, stealthy approach over shrap- 
nel-swept slopes, through gas-filled valleys. 
But news has a way of getting out, even 
in the army, and it is told that all along 
that hard-driven American line, the next 
morning, went a thrill of new confidence as 
the word passed, "The old First is in before 
Exermont!" 



4r 41 ttr 




THE FIRST DIVISION 



For three days they held the line, and 
that in itself was a costly business. On the 
morning of the fourth they went over the 
top once more. 

Over the topi A common phrase now- 
adays. But do we quite get the picture? 
You lie at dusk on some bleak, 
shell-torn hillside, clinging to the scanty 
shelter of your foxhole. Down the line 
the word passes, "In the morning we go 
over." There is nothing to do, you are 
quite ready. You try to sleep, you cannot; 
there is the long night for thought. 
A faint glimmer of light shows. A supreme 
moment. Never did life seem so sweet. 
Suddenly the air above is filled with invis- 
ible, shrieking demons, before you a wall of 
bursting shells — ^your barrage. You see your 
captain stand, his arm sweep forward. 
You rise and follow him out from 
cover. Then to the thunder before 
you is added another sound, the 
enemy's shells bursting overhead. Frag- 

*42 * 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



ments whistle about you, strike before you. 
To your left a man falls, to your right an- 
other. Your file leader goes down, you 
step forward into his place. And then 
still another sound is caught, the sinister 
**pup-P"P"Pup" of machine guns, rising until 
it dominates even the roar of shells. The 
world seems alive with hissing, crackling 
things. Men go down in groups. You feel 
terribly alone. But you walk steadily ahead. 
The idea is simple: to keep on going, in the 
hope that when the objective is reached 
enough men will be left to take and hold it. 
If there are, that is victory; if there are 
not — well, you will not know it. You come 
at last to a band of wire only partially shat- 
tered by your guns. You pick your way 
carefully through it. And then, as your 
barrage sweeps over what was a tree-clump. 
you sight just ahead a black, swaying tube 
— perhaps, glaring down it, a face. A sud- 
den red fury, hatred of that thing trying 
to take your life, comes upon you. You 



♦ 43 * 



^ 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



grip your rifle, fix your eyes on a point just 
under his chin and plunge forward. 

So they went, that October fourth, over 
fields dotted by the dead of the division 
they had relieved, over forested hills, 
through dark Death Valleys, against an 
enemy scarcely ever seen. His guns from 
long range showered the khaki lines with 
gas, shrapnel and high explosive. His ma- 
chine-guns, from hidden lairs, swept every 
approach. But as the old regulars had 
fought and died on the bloody heights of 
Soissons, so on the Aire the men of the 
draft fell and achieved. And when they 
halted, for the night, the heights of Exer- 
mont had been taken. 

Then began another historic struggle. 
Foot by foot the attacking lines hacked 
forward, fighting and paying for every foot. 
Close to their heels clung the mobile sev- 
enty-fives, forgetting that cannon must stay 
under cover and well behind the infantry; 
making their own rules; deploying boldly in 



♦ 44* 



THE FIRST DIVISION 

the open, toiling like Titans that the dough- 
boys out front might have the last ounce 
of support. They paid. . . There 

were long v^^aits under fearful artillery 
fire, while some impregnable position was 
being blasted out by our big guns, or some 
impossible machine-gun nest was being out- 
flanked. There were stealthy, creeping 
advances, craft matched against craft. There 
were dashes into the teeth of a leaden fury. 
There was a hill — Hill 263 — that held out 
for three days. Three times the infantry 
swept up its slopes in attack; three times 
the attacking battalions melted away. But 
the old Second Brigade was there, and there 
was a fourth attack, and it did not fail. 
The line swept over the crest. The German 
knew now who was in against him, and he 
concentrated in this sector the machine- 
guns and infantry of eight of his divisions 
to stop this one terrible Yankee division 
that never had been stopped. 



11 



*45* 



^ 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



It was Soissons all over again, only 
Soissons over more difficult ground, far 
more strongly fortified, and against an even 
more desperate resistance. And v^ith this 
difference: victory at Soissons had come 
through sheer grit, spirit to take punish- 
ment and keep on going. Here vsras the 
same sublime courage, and with it the fine 
skill and cool judgment of a veteran leader- 
ship, perfect coordination. A green division 
might not have won through that fastness. 

The German fought his best, and his 
best is terrible, worthy of a better cause. 
His artillery was magnificently served. His 
machine-gunners died at their posts. His 
infantry counterattacked with reckless aban- 
don. There was nothing wrong with his 
morale there. 

But on the morning of the tenth day. 
a thin, exhausted line uprose once more and 
flung itself forward in a supreme effort. 
And when that ended, the Sommerance 
Road had been taken, the way to the Kriem- 



*46* 



THE FIRST DIVISION 

hilde Line was cleared, and the First Di- 
vision once more stood upon its final 
objective. 

On the twelfth night the Forty-second 
Division marched in, and what was left of 
the First marched out — haggard, unshaven, 
inexpressibly weary of body and soul, boys 
who in twelve days had grown into old 
men. More than twelve thousand infantry 
had gone into the lines. A few over two 
thousand went back. 

The price of victory! 

Replacements were brought up, and on 
November one the First was in the lines and 
in the attack again. But this time against 
a broken enemy; the bloodshed of the past 
four months was bearing fruit. The enemy 
fled. The pursuit was swift. He stood for 
a brief moment before Mouzon, and the 
First rolled over him like an avalanche. He 
stood again on the heights before Sedan. 
The First was rushed by forced marches 
across two divisional sectors, swept up the 



W 



♦ ■♦7* 



^ 



THE FIRST DIVISION 

heights and took them. And there, at the 
very peak of the American advance, the 
division that on the red field of Soissons 
saw that advance begin, was relieved that 
the French might have the deserved honor 
of entering the historic city. The fighting 
of the First was ended. 

I have sought and cannot find a just 
tribute. Their deeds must speak for them- 
selves. Since January fifteen they had had 
only three weeks out of the battle lines. 
They had taken two hundred enemy guns, 
more than seven thousand prisoners. They 
had advanced fifty-one kilometers against 
enemy resistance, much of it the most des- 
perate encountered by any of the Allied 
armies. And they had paid — nearly twenty- 
five thousand wounded and dead. For the 
doughboys it v/as even v/orse than that, for 
of that great company twenty-four thousand 
came from four regiments whose total fight- 
ing strength did not exceed twelve thousand. 



•* 48 * 



THE FIRST DIVISION 



And so the Armistice found them, their 
record perfect to the last, a division that 
never retreated and never failed to take an 
objective. 

The echoes of the guns are stilled. Other 
voices^ not less raucous^ not less sinister^ are 
heard; in the Babel of them cynicism finds its 
chance. A -phase^ soon -past! What lives? 
The still small voice of hope whispers on. 

Slowly the scheme of things unfolds. We 
build as the coral builds. The breed of the 
strong yet lives, the gift of sight has not been 
taken away, the will to be true prevails. The 
fallen but point with rigid fingers our course — 
out of the valley and mists, on to the heights, into 
the sunshine — Forward! 



♦ 49* 



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020 933 347 8 



